Westy...that is good news. Hopefully, that makes a difference. Back to hockey and Covid. I saw this article this evening from the Washington Post. More discussion on the premise that, of all of the sports, hockey is the most susceptible to significant Covid infections/outbreaks at the rink. Here's the link...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... outbreaks/
Here are a couple of the more interesting pieces...
"Massachusetts logged more than 100 youth hockey cases in a few weeks. In Maine, an asymptomatic referee exposed up to 400 people in two days. In Bellemore’s home state of New Hampshire, state officials shut down youth hockey for two weeks to get cases under control and mandated testing for all 20,000 players — a directive that resulted in long lines and other chaos at testing centers statewide."
"Ice hockey is an anomaly. Scientists are studying hockey-related outbreaks hoping to find clues about the ideal conditions in which the coronavirus thrives — and how to stop it. Experts speculate that ice rinks may trap the virus around head level in a rink that, by design, restricts airflow, temperature and humidity."
"One critical way hockey differs from other contact team sports is how players do line changes — substitutions of groups of players — and are expected to sprint for nearly the whole time they are on the ice. Experts say it probably leads to heavier breathing, resulting in more particles being exhaled and inhaled."
Jose-Luis Jimenez, an air engineer at the University of Colorado, speculated that the spaces occupied by rinks keep the virus suspended, perhaps six to nine feet, just above the ice. Similar outbreaks have been documented in other chilly venues — meat processing factories and at a curling match earlier in the pandemic. “I suspect the air is stratified,” he said. “Much like in a cold winter night, you have these inversions where the cold air with the virus which is heavier stays closer to the ground. That gives players many more chances to breathe it in.”
Joseph Allen, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said he believes it was a mistake for school sports to shut down, because kids need physical activity, and some for-profit businesses filling the gaps may be operating in a way where “controls may not be as stringent.” “Not having sports in schools ultimately leads to wider contact networks for many kids,” he explained.
A PolicyLab blog post last month recommended that if youth sports leagues want to preserve any opportunity to keep playing, they need to enact mandates that strictly curtail all off-field interaction. Even then, “the potential for on-field spread may be too overwhelming to continue safely with team competition during periods of widespread community transmission, and may need to be sacrificed to preserve in-school learning options, at least until early spring or transmission rates decrease substantially.”
Massachusetts Hockey President Bob Joyce said families who didn’t like those new rules took their children to play in neighboring states with fewer restrictions. And sometimes those players played on multiple teams or had siblings who did and went to school, creating very large social networks. “It was a wake-up call,” Joyce said. He said state officials estimated that those 108 initial hockey cases amounted to 3,000 to 4,000 others potentially exposed.
In an October report, the CDC detailed a large outbreak in Florida among amateur adult hockey players on two teams that played each other but had no other contact. Investigators speculated that the indoor space and close contact increased the infection risk. They also pointed out that ice hockey “involves vigorous physical exertion accompanied by deep, heavy respiration, and during the game, players frequently move from the ice surface to the bench while still breathing heavily.”
Rubin, who is a pediatrician in addition to his public policy research job, said he worries those on the ice may be inhaling larger doses of the virus due to these environmental conditions, making it more likely they will become infected. “It’s very hard to sort out, but you wonder if increased inoculum of the virus is an extra factor,” he said.
Demming expressed similar thoughts: “It could be infection rates are common across sports, but in a sport like hockey where you are trapping more virus in the breathable air it could result in more severe infections that end up being symptomatic.”
In Vermont, an outbreak at a single ice rink ripped through the center of the state, affecting at least 20 towns in at least four counties, and seeding other outbreaks at several schools. By Oct. 30, when Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) detailed the outbreak at a press briefing, 473 contacts had been associated with it.
I'm interested to hear what a number of you think about what's presented. Unfortunately, things aren't improving too much as we had 5,300 plus on Friday. I will be very surprised if Walz doesn't extend the current pause through Jan. 1st, and maybe even longer. Which sucks for our kids. I hope to God the weather cools off enough to get my backyard rink ready because that might be the only way my two kids get to actually skate for two months...
. And yes, from Vermont and Ontario. The point being that those hockey rich areas are seeing the same challenges and making the same decisions our state is. Also, Anchorage, AK just shut down all sports from Dec.1 thru Dec. 31st.